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I've gotten started, and have made a couple pieces. A couple small pieces. I had to make a fixture plate for the rotary table to hold onto these parts. The largest dimensions with the flanges is 1.5" x 2", .125" flange. They aren't finished yet, but I'm only going to be drilling a hole in each one, reaming the hole to 24mm, and cutting a slit in one side. Because this bike is a prototype, I decided that adjustable fork offset would be nice if I could make the small inserts, so these will be where the stem goes through on the triple trees. I'll likely make 3 sets. Holes centered, 3mm offset, and 6mm offset. Wanted to make these first as proof of concept for being able to make and hold onto the small pieces.

Also of interest, I finally acquired a TIG welder, and did my first practice yesterday. Tried with 1/8" mild steel first. Didn't look that great, but the welds were functional-ish.

Then I tried aluminum that was a little thinner.

Apparently, that was beginner's luck. Still, I think with practice, I'll be fine. I tested several different types of joints. Butt, lap, T, outside corner. With one of them, I only welded about about .75" long, and I almost couldn't break it by hand. Next up, I'll be making the lower triple, upper triple, steering stem, and bearing head tube.

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I guess I'll do another update. I have the upper triple mostly hogged out. Need to round off a few corners, cut some angled sides, drill and tap a few holes, and cut a couple slots. I think it's far enough along to be a good tease of the finished product. I did have one oops with an endmill. It's on the bottom side. Now that I have a TIG, I could always fill it back in, and then smooth it out, but I'm not sure if I'll bother.

This might also illustrate how I can have adjustable fork offset by making more oval pieces with holes off center.

I think this would cost more than people would want to spend on a Honda Grom. At least, those are the forks I'm using for the bike I'm building. Grom forks and wheels, and I'm building the entire frame and swingarm. With the steering stem hole centered in the oval piece, this would drop right onto a grom though. Well, maybe. I don't know how thick the top triple is on that.

But here's the update. I still need to tap the hole for the set screw for the oval piece. The outer radius looks slightly odd because of sanding. I think I'm still going to smooth corners a bit and maybe polish. I'm contemplating having all the aluminum parts anodized, including the frame and swingarm.

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That's what I mean though. I literally have no style/fashion sense, so doing a color scheme is not my forte. I do love the anodized blue on my 2014 drz400sm though. I think having a 100% aluminum perimeter frame anodized blue would be amazing. But would a matching swingarm be too much? A different color? The company also has a proprietary process they created to anodize HD photos/graphics, so if I were make a logo, it could be anodized on. Beyond my realm of creativity here though.

In other news, I'm wanting to document this as well as possible. I've started keeping a notebook with hand drawings and notes, as well as all the hardware/materials used. I've finally started trying to learn Fusion 360 as CAD/CAM. In the future, I may invest in building a CNC machine, which would make it even easier to make many parts in this.

I also did a little cyber monday shopping at 30% off.

It's beginning to look a lot like bike frames!

I also got some 1/8" sheet for making gussets and fairing mounting tabs out of.

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I can't afford one, that's why I'd build one. Also, I'm not building a Katana. I'm building a smaller bike for miniGP racing as a one off total custom bike. It's going to be a 25hp 190cc Daytona engine, and I'm building this to compete with the Ohvale bikes that are getting imported now. $7000 for a bike that's the size of my pocket bike is ridiculous, so I'm building a bike I can fit on for an endurance race and be comfortable.

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Well, I've gotten started on some other parts. I was waiting for aluminum for the lower triple and steering stem to come in, and got bored. First I cut one of the 8' aluminum tubes in half. Then, to be able to visualize how it would look like the cardboard frame, I covered it with blue tape.

That may have also helped with doing layout for the pie cuts. Maybe. The welding seemed to go alright. Did I mention that I'm actively learning to weld aluminum for this project, and doing practice work still? Yeah, I know that means it's insane to weld together my own frame like this. What's the worst that could happen? I mean, I've shattered the front wheel of a pocket bike while backing it into a turn.

After some welding, where I only got a couple crappy in progress shots, I decided I needed to make the headstock before going any further. The front part of the frame is "bent" to shape, with the forward pieces left a couple inches long so I could trim to fit. My goal is to get 8" between inner walls of the two frame pieces for the vertical portions for engine and swingarm mounts. I need the headstock to know where to trim, and then need to measure to get the right length. I laid it out on paper, but perfect angles work a lot better in math on paper than they do with pie cuts and bending/welding aluminum tubes.